Disused railway lines and closed stations in Edinburgh

59 miles of disused railway
60 closed stations
12 stations open today
30 named lost lines

Edinburgh has 59 miles of disused railway and 60 closed stations, against 12 stations still open today. More stations have closed here than remain: 5.0 lost for every one still served. The longest lost line is the Balerno Branch, with 6.0 miles of its route inside Edinburgh.

See Edinburgh’s lost railways on the map

The map opens on the county with the disused lines and closed stations drawn over today’s network. Tap any closed station for its history, or any grey line for its name.

What is left of it

The 59 miles of lost railway in Edinburgh break down as 34 miles with the track lifted and the trackbed still traceable, 20 miles built over or ploughed out, with little or no trace left and 6.0 miles with track still in place but no trains. These are OpenStreetMap’s own distinctions, made by the people who surveyed each stretch, so a line can appear under more than one state along its length.

Lost railway lines in Edinburgh

30 named lines with disused track in the county, longest stretch first. The mileage is the part inside Edinburgh; a line crossing the border is counted on both sides.

Line	Miles in county
Balerno Branch	6.0
Granton Branch	5.4
Queensferry and Dalmeny South (Kirkliston) Branch	3.9
Seafield Branch	3.2
Barnton Branch	2.6
South Queensferry Branch	2.5
Leith Branch	2.5
Craigentinny and Powderhall Branch	2.4
Leith South Freight Yard	2.4
Niddrie North Junction to Bilston Glen Branch	2.1
Portobello to Wanton Walls Junction (Lothian) Line	1.9
Ingliston Branch	1.7
Edinburgh Branch	1.6
Corstorphine Branch	1.2
Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway	1.2
Leith Central Branch	1.0
Scotland Street Goods Line	0.9
Western Breakwater Branch	0.9
Wester Dalry Branch	0.7
Gorgie Goods Branch	0.6
Scotland Street Tunnel	0.6
Warriston to Trinity Lane Line	0.6
Abbeyhill to Craigentinny Line	0.6
Waverley to Bonnington Branch	0.6
Fisherrow Branch	0.5
North Leith Branch	0.5
Pilton Fork	0.5
Ravelrig Quarry	0.5
Dalry Connecting Branch	0.4
The Innocent Railway	0.4

Closed railway stations in Edinburgh

All 60 closed and former stations in Edinburgh, A to Z. Each name opens the map on the station; the Wikipedia link, where there is one, has its history.

Stations still open in Edinburgh

12 stations in Edinburgh still have a train service. The busiest are Edinburgh Waverley (22.8 million a year), Haymarket (3.3 million a year), Edinburgh Park (558,812 a year), Dalmeny (488,872 a year) and Edinburgh Gateway (254,676 a year). Every one has its own page, with the stations you can reach from it directly and how often the trains run: see the A to Z of stations.

Lost railways nearby

Midlothian, West Lothian, East Lothian, Fife, Scottish Borders and South Lanarkshire.

About these figures

The disused lines are the stretches OpenStreetMap records as disused, abandoned, razed or dismantled railway, measured segment by segment and given to the county each segment lies in. The closed stations are Wikidata’s record of British railway stations no longer in service, kept where they are not within a few hundred metres of a station still open. The boundary is today’s council area, from the Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0; contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2024). Historic county lines were different, and a closed station a mile over the border is on the neighbouring page.

Every county · About the disused lines layer · About the closed stations